Nwesweek, 4/25/08 - Republican Congressman Paul Broun, the representative from Georgia's 10th District, wants to stop the sale of Playboy and Penthouse at military bases around the world, invoking an argument that at the very least is scientifically questionable: that consuming even soft pornography makes men more prone to committing sex crimes. A doctor by profession, Broun says he began drafting the bill after a constituent described her distress at having watched, along with her young children, an officer buy a nudie magazine at a military exchange store. "The military teaches to respect officers, and her little kids were seeing this military officer … there in uniform, buying pornography at the PX," Broun told NEWSWEEK.

Congress already has a law from 1996 banning the sale of "sexually explicit" material on military bases. But deciding what qualifies as sexually explicit was left to a Department of Defense review board, which gathers periodically to examine a range of magazines and DVDs. In its review two years ago the board banned such titles as Bootylicious and Juggs but decided that Penthouse has enough nonsexual content to be acceptable (Playboy had already been allowed). Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, a Pentagon spokesman, said the board members are kept anonymous in order not to expose them to outside pressure but have included active, reserve and retired members of the military, military spouses, members of dual-military couples and DoD civilians. "The board is very disciplined in adhering to the definitions described in the Instruction [from Congress], and has access to legal counsel to assist members in interpreting the law and the Instruction," Melnyk said in an e-mail.

Broun, who is 61, wants to take away the board's discretion by inserting into the old law some new language delineating terms like "sexually explicit." His bill gets (readers be warned) blush-inducingly specific. It defines nudity, for instance, as the display of "human genitals, pubic area, anus, anal cleft, or any part of the female breast below a horizontal line across the top of the areola."

Even for people who support the congressman from Georgia (he has attracted 16 co-sponsors since introducing the bill April 16), it must be hard not to conclude that he's fighting yesterday's war. Judd Anstey, the public relations manager for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), says the combined sales of Playboy and Penthouse at bases around the world last year amounted to less than 3 percent of AAFES's total magazine sales. (Magazines generally make up only a small part of sales by AAFES stores, which stock everything from candy bars to plasma TVs.) For Broun's generation the pictures in Playboy and Penthouse were probably the dirtiest things around. In the Internet age GIs with laptops are never more than a couple of clicks away from much raunchier porn.

Broun says the point is pornography shouldn't be subsidized by taxpayers. And he insists nudie magazines have taken a toll on the armed services. "Sexual assault is going up within the military, and I certainly think there's a very high likelihood the pornography being sold in military PXs is contributing to that," he says. Both points are off the mark. Anstey says 98 percent of AAFES's budget comes from income generated at its stores—not from the government. And most studies have shown no link between the kind of pictures featured in Playboy and sexual violence.

Where a link does often exist is between a politician's rising rhetoric and his quest for re-election. Broun has been in Congress since last year, when he was elected to replace the 10th District representative, who died of cancer. This July he faces a primary vote against a conservative member of the state's House of Representatives, Barry Fleming, in a district Broun describes as very Republican. But Broun denies the bill is linked to the election. "The purpose is just to get DoD to uphold the law," he says.

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US Military Selling Porn to Troops

USA Today, 11/12/07 - Ten years after Congress banned sales of sexually explicit material on military bases, the Pentagon is under fire for continuing to sell adult fare such as "Penthouse".

Dozens of religious and anti-pornography groups have complained to Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a Pentagon board set up to review magazines and films is allowing sales of material that Congress intended to ban.

"They're saying, 'We're not selling stuff that's sexually explicit' ... and we say it's pornography," says Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, a Christian anti-pornography group. A letter-writing campaign launched this month by opponents of the policy aims to convince Congress to "get the Pentagon to obey the law," he adds.

In a letter to the groups, Leslye Arsht, a deputy under secretary of Defense, said the Pentagon's Resale Activities Board of Review uses appropriate guidelines to review material for sale. The board this year reviewed "Penthouse" and several "Playboy" publications and determined that "based solely on the totality of each magazine's content, they were not sexually explicit," Arsht wrote. However, the board did decide to bar the sale of several videos found by the anti-pornography groups at military stores.

The Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996 bars stores on military bases from selling "sexually explicit material." Challenged as a First Amendment violation, the law was upheld by a U.S. appeals court in 2002.

Defense officials "don't want to take porn away from soldiers," says Patrick Trueman, a former federal prosecutor who now works with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group. "They say, 'Well, 40 percent of this magazine is sexually explicit pictures, but 60 percent is writing or advertising, so the totality is not sexually explicit.' That's ridiculous."

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., who sponsored the law, says the military is skirting Congress' intent. He notes the material also could contribute to a hostile environment for female military personnel. "If soldiers want to read that stuff, they can walk down the street and buy it somewhere else," Bartlett says. "I don't want (the military) to help."

Nadine Strossen, a New York University law professor who heads the American Civil Liberties Union, says the law effectively censors what troops get to read in remote areas or combat zones. "We're asking these people to risk their lives to defend our Constitution's principles ... and they're being denied their own First Amendment rights to choose what they read," she said.

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Soldiers Fighting Porn

ABC News, 1/6/06 - Cloaked in camouflage and no bigger than a breadbox, a new addition to many soldiers' backpacks is a five-book kit intended to "help men and women find freedom from sexual temptation God's way."

The kits — from New Life Ministries, which broadcasts on 150 stations nationwide — promote Bible-based abstinence: no pornography, adultery, nonmarital sex or masturbation.

"Your goal is sexual purity," the text says. "You are sexually pure when no sexual gratification comes from anyone or anything but your wife."

Each kit comes with an "Every Man's Battle" book and workbook for men or an "Every Woman's Battle" book and workbook for women, plus a Bible study guide and a daily devotional.

Combating the Problem of Pornography

Divorce rates in the military have risen, especially in the Army, where the number of divorces nearly doubled from 2001 to 2004, according to the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland.

Chaplain Randy Brandt, stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany, said the kits have helped combat the "problem of pornography."

"Even while we were in Iraq, the pervasion of this problem was evident — soldiers had porno CDs they could play on their personal DVDs, and they had sexually suggestive magazines "graciously" donated for the soldiers' entertainment," Brandt said. "The problem is an age-old one with the military: Soldiers are far away from home for a long time, sexual frustration sets in, and the visual stimuli become the easiest release."

But Brandt said the real problem starts when the soldiers return home.

"The soldiers come home, many are addicted to this type of sexual stimulation and either consciously or subconsciously they begin to compare their current relationship with the visual/Internet/virtual reality that they are used to and unfortunately, the real woman — wife or girlfriend — rarely can measure up," Brandt said.

20,000 Kits Ordered

New Life hopes its kits will replace pornography and keep soldiers focused on their spouses and families back home, so that the transition from battle to domestic life goes a little easier.

Spokesman Larry Sonnenburg said the Christian group has shipped 11,000 kits, mainly to Iraq and Afghanistan. But increasingly, troops at home are requesting the kits. Total orders now number nearly 20,000.

The battle kits began with a call earlier this year to New Life Ministries from Michael Music, a chaplain's assistant with a Navy unit then in Iraq.

Because of long deployments and because more soldiers are married, the chaplain has focused more than before on the sexual lives of soldiers.

Although pornography remains a pervasive problem, said the chaplains, the bigger problem is the crisis it produces in the military psyche.

Sgt. Frank Aguilar, who organizes Bible studies at Fort Heachuca, Ariz., said he hoped the kits would bring his unit together once it's deployed to Iraq.

"Whatever happens over there will happen," Aguilar said. "I just want to go with a platoon and have tools to prepare us that makes us closer, and we will have less problems. These problems may seem trivial, but it ends up affecting the whole unit."

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